Calls Mount to Investigate Bush Officials for Torture

Senior officials under the former George W. Bush
administration knowingly authorized the torture of terrorism
suspects held under United States custody, a Human Right Watch
(HRW) report released Tuesday revealed.

Titled “Getting Away With Torture,” the 107-page report presents a
plethora of evidence that HRW says warrants criminal investigations
against former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfield, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Director George Tenet, and Bush himself, among others.

Newly declassified memos, transcriptions of congressional hearings,
and other sources indicate that Bush officials authorized the use of
interrogation techniques almost universally considered torture — such
as waterboarding — as well as the operation of covert CIA prisons
abroad and the rendition of detainees to countries where they
were subsequently tortured.

HRW also criticized the United States under the current Barack Obama
administration for failing to meets it obligations under the United
Nations Convention Against Torture to investigate acts of torture and
other inhumane treatment.

“President Obama has defended the decision not to prosecute officials
in his predecessor’s administration by arguing that the country needs
‘to look forward, not backward,'” said HRW executive director Kenneth
Roth. “[He] has treated torture as an unfortunate policy choice
rather than a crime.”

To date, both the Bush and Obama administrations have successfully
prevented courts from reviewing the merits of torture allegations in
civil lawsuits by arguing that the cases involve sensitive
information, which, if revealed, might endanger national security.

Last year, Bush defended the use of waterboarding on the grounds that
the Justice Department deemed it legal. In 2002, lawyers in the
Office of Legal Counsel had drafted memos approving the legality of a
list of abusive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.
However, HRW documents evidence that shows senior administration
officials pressured the politically appointed lawyers to write these
legal justifications.

“Senior Bush officials shouldn’t be allowed to shape and hand-pick
legal advice and then hide behind it as if were autonomously
delivered,” Roth said.

HRW further recommends that Congress establish an independent,
nonpartisan commission to examine the mistreatment of detainees in
U.S. custody since the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon and compensate victims of
torture, as required by the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

“Without [a commission], torture very much remains within the toolbox
of accepted policies. People are not going to back away from it until
there is accountability,” Karen Greenberg, executive director of New
York University’s Center on Law and Security and author of The Least
Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days, told IPS.

In 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special
prosecutor to investigate detainee abuse, but limited the mandate to
only “unauthorized” acts, which effectively excluded violations like
waterboarding and forcing prisoners to maintain stress positions that
were approved by the Bush administration.

But on June 30 of this year, the Justice Department announced that it
would continue probing only two of nearly 100 allegations of torture.
The open cases involve the deaths of two men — Manadel al-Jamadi, an
Iraqi, and Gul Rahman, an Afghan — in CIA custody.

Human and civil rights group criticized the narrow scope of the
torture investigations, while HRW said they failed to address the
systematic character of the abuses.

“The U.S. government’s pattern of abuse across several countries did
not result from acts of individuals who broke the rules,” Roth said.
“It resulted from decisions made by senior U.S. officials to bend,
ignore, or cast aside the rules.”
If the U.S. does not pursue criminal investigations, HRW is urging
other countries to exercise universal jurisdiction under
international law and prosecute the aforementioned officials.

A number of former detainees have already taken this step by filing
criminal complaints in courts outside of the U.S.

In February 2011, alleged victims of torture living in Switzerland
planned to file a suit against Bush, causing him to cancel his trip
there.

Another investigation is underway in Spain, where the Center for
Constitutional Rights and the European Center for Constitutional and
Human Rights requested a subpoena for a former commander of the Abu
Ghraib prison to explain his role in the alleged torture of four
detainees.

Washington’s failure to investigate its own citizens for abuses such as
torture ultimately undercuts its efforts to hold other governments
accountable for human rights violations, according to HRW.

“The U.S. is right to call for justice when serious international
crimes are committed in places like Darfur, Libya, and Sri Lanka, but
there should be no double standards,” Roth said.

“When the U.S. government shields its own officials from
investigation and prosecution, it makes it easier for others to
dismiss global efforts to bring violators of serious crimes to
justice,” he added.

Failing to prosecute ultimately sends the message that “if you are
powerful, you can get away with even torture,” Greenberg said.